Tag: gaming

There are thousands of reasons to love Macs. They’re powerful and reliable, and macOS provides an unrivaled experience. However, when it comes to gaming, the Mac lacks the complete library of games that Windows boasts.

But that’s not to say that there aren’t great games available right now for macOS. Rocket Yard contributor Ric Molina at Mac Gamer HQ has once again proven this with his recent list of the Top 25 Best Mac Games of 2018.

The list is worth a look for Mac gaming enthusiasts, those new to Mac gaming, and new Mac owners alike. To make it simple, Mac Gamer HQ even breaks down the general system requirements for each game on the list.

Apple’s AirPods are apparently a hit, but they’re not perfect. One of the major drawbacks of iPhone’s wireless headphones is the fact that they’re, well, wireless, and aren’t compatible with anything lacking Bluetooth. Twelve South, which has a reputation for making attractive, smart Apple peripherals, thinks it’s solved the issue with AirFly, which is priced at $40 (£40 in the UK and €45 in Europe).

The dongle (more dongles, yes I know) ensures that your AirPods are now compatible with pretty much anything with a 3.5mm headphone jack. As you might expect, given its name, the AirFly was made for in-flight entertainment.

Nvidia announced its financial results on Thursday, and they were spectacular. For the company’s first fiscal quarter—which runs from late January through late April—the company had revenues of $3.2 billion. That’s up 10 percent from the previous quarter and up 66 percent over the last year. Profits were even more impressive, rising 11 percent from the previous quarter and 145 percent from a year earlier.

A big reason for this: the soaring value of ether and other cryptocurrencies in recent months created a ton of demand for graphics cards to mine them. That surging demand caused the street price of some high-end graphics cards to more than double between mid-2017 and February 2018.

It’s a sensitive subject for major graphics-card makers because their most important market in

Enlarge/ Some might object to using a slot machine to illustrate a piece on loot boxes, but Juniper directly calls them “a form of in-game gambling” so… (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

With all the controversy, scrutiny, and international regulation randomized video game loot boxes are facing these days, you might think the practice of charging players for a chance at unknown in-game items might be set for a precipitous decline. On the contrary, though, one analyst sees spending on loot boxes increasing by over 62 percent in the next four years to become a $47 billion piece of the industry. By then, loot boxes will represent over 29 percent of all spending on digital games, the analyst said, up from just under 25 percent currently.

Learning how to regulate your emotions is a fundamental skill, but it can be tough for kids, especially those with challenging behaviors, oppositional disorder, ADHD and autism. Mightier, by Neuromotion Labs, is a gaming platform that teaches kids a valuable set of emotion management skills using just a phone, an app and a heart rate monitor.

Apple is updating nearly all of its operating systems today. Alongside the newest iOS 11.3, the company has released new versions for its tvOS, WatchOS and HomePod, which is getting its first post-launch update. Unfortunately, the hotly-anticipated AirPlay 2 is nowhere to be found.

Yesterday’s Apple event showed that the company wants to make a serious push back into the education sector. This isn’t anything new, though, according to CEO Tim Cook; it’s just the company going back to its roots. The centerpiece here is a “new” iPad, a 9.7-inch tablet with Apple Pencil support that aims to woo teachers everywhere. There’s also a redesigned iWork suite that lets students doodle and create digital books within Pages; the Schoolwork app, for tracking, well, schoolwork; and a kid-friendly tool for coding AR. Apple is hoping that will be enough to win over schools.

Until recently, playing console video games on a Mac was primarily for PlayStation 4 owners via Remote Play. But now the Xbox One is joining the party with the release of the new OneCast app.

OneCast lets Xbox One and Mac owners play games using the original Xbox One wireless controller connected to your Mac by either USB or Bluetooth connection.

Windows 10 machines have supported streaming for Xbox One gamers since 2015, but Mac owners had been forced to use apps such as Parallels to install Windows in order to play. OneCast says that its app supports HD 1080p video with high performance and “extremely low lag”.

Before now, if you fancied playing console games on your Mac, you’d need to use PlayStation 4’s Remote Play to do so. Windows 10 users have been able to stream Xbox One titles to their PCs since 2015, but macOS users have been out of luck. A new $10 app called OneCast, however, has apparently figured out how to get your Xbox One games streaming to your Mac.

Apple may be one of the biggest companies in the world, but it still doesn’t open up often about how it operates. A few times a year though, we catch a glimpse. Fast Company caught up with CEO Tim Cook back in January to chat Apple’s recent run of new gear in an interview that published this week.

This morning, original Star Control creators Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III filed a response to Stardock’s Star Control lawsuit, which seeks injunctions and damages against Ford and Reiche for, among other things, alleged willful and intentional trademark infringement and trademark counterfeiting. Ford and Reiche also filed a countersuit against Stardock seeking their own injunctions and damages. The response and counterclaim can be viewed here and here respectively. Stardock’s original filing is over here.

The filings are the latest escalation in what is turning into a deeply acrimonious legal battle over who possesses the rights to publish and sell the classic Star Control trilogy of video games—and who has the rights to create new Star Control games. (Or at least who can name their games “Star Control.”)

It’s a twisted tale, and understanding what is going on requires digging back through 30 years of agreements and

Angry Birds Champions is now available on iOS devices and through the developer’s website, allowing players to fling their feathered friends against precarious piles of pigs in a bid to win real money for the first time. The game is accessible through the WorldWinner iOS app or on WorldWinner.com, joining the studio’s other real-money tournament games like Wheel of Fortune, Solitaire, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit.

“It’s really the original Angry Birds physics game — and obviously Rovio’s done a number of different derivatives using the iconography — but this is the core physics game of shooting birds and killing pigs,” WorldWinner boss Jeremy Shea told Engadget.

Video games are good at war. For decades, games have covered the breadth, horror and honor of battle in every conceivable arena, from ancient history to futuristic space stations, from the hills of Mordor to the beaches of Normandy. Games have a long history of transforming firefights into sporting events, pitting players against one another with a wide array of weapons at their disposal. It makes sense, given where the industry started.

“When our technology was really primitive, the easiest things to create were simulations of sports and of physical things and battles and sort of black-and-white conditions,” Ken Wong, the creator of Monument Valley, says. “Since then we’ve developed so much technology and discussion, and we’re able to create stories and characters with a lot of subtleties, but it feels like gaming as an industry is still hanging onto that past as sort of the true form of Continue reading “‘Florence’ turns falling in love into a video game”

Apple has added yet another scripted series to its lineup: Little America, a half-hour anthology series based on true stories about immigrants in the US featured in Epic Magazine. The company has tapped Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, writers of the Oscar-nominated indie hit The Big Sick, as well as SMILF executive producer Lee Eisenberg and Master of None co-creator Alan Yang to make the series for Apple.

Mobile gaming has come a long way. Over the past few years we’ve gone from simple distractions like Snake, Words With Friends and Doodle Jump to full-on narrative experiences crafted specifically for Android and iOS devices. What’s more, at least a few traditional console game developers have shifted entirely to mobile at this point, and, in a bit of a reversal, they’ve ported their games to consoles. By 2012, game-design toolsets like Unity and Unreal made a charming indie designed for mobile devices indistinguishable from one you’d play on a PlayStation or Xbox. As such, for the purposes of this list, we’re focusing on games that have been released within the past five years.

Apple has always operated its app business with an eye to protecting its customers from potentially shady business practices. From early guidelines around app content to more recent bans on misleading apps, Apple has a heavier hand in what shows up in the App Store. Now Apple has added a new requirement for games that offer loot boxes with randomized rewards for purchase. If your game offers them, you have to now disclose the odds of receiving the rewards promised.

The latest update for Pokémon Go doesn’t add new monsters. Instead, it takes advantage of iOS 11’s advanced augmented reality tech to give you a better look at them. “The new AR+ feature builds on the core AR gameplay in Pokémon Go and leverages Apple’s ARKit framework to enhance the visuals and dynamics of catching Pokémon in the real world,” a blog post says. Meaning, Pikachu and pals will now be the proper size based on where you find them. Getting closer or backing up will cause them to change in size and perspective from here on out assuming you have an iPhone 6s or newer.

Xbox’s retro-inspired Cuphead is on the App Store. There’s just one problem: it’s a fake. While the iTunes preview page looks legit, the game isn’t actually an official project from designer Studio MDHR. A quick whois search reveals that the phoney website is hosted in Hungary and that registered owner, Sheridens LTD. has done this sort of thing before with an unofficial mobile port of melee brawler Gang Beasts. In fact, the fake Studio MDHR website was set up less than two months ago.

Xbox’s retro-inspired Cuphead is on the App Store. There’s just one problem: it’s a fake. While the iTunes preview page looks legit, the game isn’t actually an official project from designer Studio MDHR. A quick whois search reveals that the phoney website is hosted in Hungary and that registered owner, Sheridens LTD. has done this sort of thing before with an unofficial mobile port of melee brawler Gang Beasts. In fact, the fake Studio MDHR website was set up less than two months ago.

If you were eagerly awaiting the day you’d get to control a smartphone game with your eyebrows, the time is now. At least, if you own Apple’s thousand-dollar iPhone X. “Rainbrow” (see what they did there) is the brainchild of Washington University computer science grad Nathan Gitter. The game harnesses the flagship’s TrueDepth camera and ARKit augmented reality platform to deliver a headache-inducing arcade trip. Think Frogger, but instead of a frog dodging freeway traffic, you control a smiley across what looks like a Pride flag, dodging other emoji in order to amass points.

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